A group of students from Staffordshire University, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire are developing a new Apple iPad app dedicated to space related news.

The Spaced app will feature news from NASA, the European Space Agency, the UK Space Agency and more spaced related outlets, along with video and data updates.

"Our goal from the start was to produce an app for the iPad bringing together the best part of the new space era in a more mainstream fashion that is easily accessible to a larger audience," team member and film student Steven Waterfall told Journalism.co.uk.

"The initial idea for Spaced came after searching through the iTunes App Store for apps of that nature. The first we came across was of course NASA's own app, after a few minutes of use it was clear to see this a straight port of NASA's website, rather than extracting the important/popular features of the NASA site and shaping them into a well thought out, touch interface, they tried to cram the entire website into the app."

The team have looked to other apps from the likes of Financial Times, Telegraph and the BBC for inspiration and hope to offer something, which improves on what's already available on iTunes from other spaced themed apps. They hope to offer Spaced for 59p and later a free version supported by advertising.

"The iTunes App Store is a perfect way for people to easily find our app and helps us market the app towards a specific audience. There are over 120 million iOS devices and all we have to do is submit the app to Apple and we have the potential for millions of people to discover Spaced," Steven Waterfall added.